Parietals Battle of '67 Might Be Won Next Year

The latest battle over parietals--massacre is more like it--began two months ago when a Lowell House sophomore named John Palazzo was "humiliated," as he tells it, by the superintendent. He forgot to sign in a female guest one night and the incident was very embarrassing, Palazzo says. He thinks he might have lost the girl because of it. But the incident also started something very big--a fanatic-paced last-ditch drive for the liberalization (or perhaps eradication) of Harvard's parieal rules.

When it was all over, after the Masters and the Deans had said NO a week ago today, some very important things had occurred: virtually every House had shown overwhelming support for the changes, Lowell's Master Zeph Stewart had come out publicly and forcefully against the present parietal system, and Palazzo and his boys had begun a new movement to make the Houses autonomous units.

Of course the parietal movement was doomed from the start. Everyone knew that the Committee on Houses would turn down whatever kind of proposal was presented, because in December it had already done something about parietals, and that was quite enough for this year. As Master Gill put it bluntly, "There can only be so much reconsideration of the issue. It is really too soon to go through all of the searching and evaluation again."

Another Master, who preferred to go unnamed, said the night before the vote, "You know, this committee doesn't like to feel it is being pushed. It likes to take everything very slowly and deliberately. I don't think there is much hope for any changes now." He was right. According to Gill, the committee's official spokesman, the issue was pushed aside very quickly, almost as if it were just a silly nuisance.

But Master Stewart did not want the issue to die so quickly in the meeting. He tried very hard, but when it was over he said in a discouraged way, "I feel very strongly that the whole philosophy of my intelligent and able colleagues is very different from mine on this issue."

That is no doubt true. But there were other reasons for the committee's curt dismissal of the parietals proposal. First of all, it was far too extreme. The plan Stewart backed called for noon to midnight visiting hours every day except Saturday, when they would last until 1 a.m. That would mean more than doubling the present number of hours, and that was just too radical for the Masters. After all, the only change before December of the rules drawn up in 1953-54 was extending Saturday hours from 11 p.m. to midnight. And that was in 1957. In 1963, there was a national scandal over a request to Dean Monro for more Friday parietals. The Deans and the Masters certainly haven't forgotten that.

Another reason for refusing the change was that the proposal had not gone through the proper channels, the Masters said. Not only did it happen too fast, without time for all that "searching and evaluation" that Gill talked about, but it came from a single House. "Many of them thought that they should not be bothered by a proposal coming from one House or from one individual," Stewart said. "They thought that it should come from the HUC, a more representative body."

The HUC was "the easy way out," as its president Daniel B. Magraw '68 said the night before the vote. Magraw was sure that the committee would turn the changes down, and he was nearly equally sure that the committee would dump the business into his lap--a simple expedient with only three weeks of school left.

Magraw became the target of bitter criticism from the reformers. Pa-about Magraw's competence and about his interest in the students. But Magraw, it seems, played it very smart. lazzo had very bad things to say He was seconded by John Crocker--chairman of the Dunster House Committee, who drafted a 21-page report on the parietals poll in his House. He realized that so late in the year, after there had already been one change, there was no chance of success for the parietal proposal in the committee. Magraw chose to wait it out. The HUC never touched parietals during the whole time that Palazzo was collecting signatures on his various petitions and polls. The HUC just kept its hands clean. Magraw wouldn't be identified by the Masters and the Deans as one of those pushy Lowell House radicals. Then, at least, Magraw said, there would be a chance for something next year. He claims that the committee turned down one thing he did bring before it--more interhouse nights--because the parietal issue obscured it.

Magraw said before the committee met, "The push for the Friday extension [in the Fall] was a slick, behind-the scenes affair, low-key and rational." He thought that the Palazzo movement was "just the opposite," cramping the committee's style. "It's not that I like it that way," the HUC head said later. "That is just the way the Masters work. It's regrettable, but that is the way we have to approach this thing to get changes."

Right now Magraw is in good shape to get something done next year. An HUC committee is issuing an extensive report next Fall with recommendations on dining, off-campus living, and parietals among other things. The recommendations will go to the Committee on Houses, and Magraw, who has appeared as a low-key and rational type throughout the Spring battle, should be well-received.

It was in the middle of April that Palazzo came to the realization that "Harvard students can change things here. The problem is that they just don't know it." He has since found that it is not quite so simple. But in the beginning, that realization, gleaned from meetings with Stewart and Dr. Graham Blaine of the Health Services among others, provided him with a fanatic zeal to get what he wanted done done right now, even with just a month or so of school left.

Parietals, to Palazzo, were only incidental. They were part of a much bigger problem. "The University," he said, "is trying to resist change. It is trying to remain a sexually segregated institution in a world that is not like that." In the beginning, Palazzo said that among other things he wanted coeducational dormitories and the total elimination of parietal restrictions.

Palazzo built up a following very quickly. Three other Lowell House students-Neal P. Katz '68, John D. Kennedy '68, and Andrew Zucker '67-drew up petitions asking for a trial period of extended hours that would become the focus of the Masters' lebate. Palazzo, meanwhile, drew up a far more detailed questionnaire. Together, the poll and the petition received favorable responses from 80 to 90 per cent of the students from all the residential Houses except Kirkland. Palazzo also pushed for a town meeting in Lowell House-an open forum where parietals and the revamping of House government would be discussed.

The town meeting, attended by just 50 students, turned out to be a dull affair. There were four or five slightly different proposals made to institutionalize the town meeting and to give the House the right to make its own social rules. But the town meeting wasn't official and nothing came of it.

But the town meeting and the poll in Lowell did convince Stewart that his charges were strongly behind changes in parietal rules. Other Masters brushed off the polls in their Houses very quickly. "There has to be discussion," went the typical remark still, all of them know exactly what their students wanted. That wasn't hard to figure out, even without the polls. But they felt they couldn't simply go by that kind of sentiment. Nonetheless Stewart supported his boys.

At the May 17 meeting only he and Bruce Chalmers. Master of Winthrop, backed the proposal. Both of them have pressed for liberalization for a long time and now Stewart was backing a definite plan, drawn up by students in his House, with the support of most of the College. He called the present system "too restrictive" and said it would be "worthwhile to have a test of this kind of change [the Lowell proposal]." But his arguments didn't work on the other Masters. Even the more liberal ones decided this was not a time to make a case of it. One of them said, "There was just no chance for the proposal at the meeting and there was no reason to push it then." Both that unnamed Master and Chalmers commented that there would definitely be changes sometime in the future, perhaps even the elimination of parietals.

The future-as far as Palazzo, Katz, Magraw, and Crocker are concerned-is next year. Katz and three other Lowell House students wrote a letter to the Crimson blasting Gill and the other Masters for refusing to listen to "an overwhelming majority of Harvard undergraduates." They are planning something big for next year. At the least, a concerted drive, using the HUC as the spearhead, at the most, massive civil disobedience. Just what kind of disobedience no one will say. They don't want to antagonize the Masters just now.

Stewart said last week that "for now I will just try to convince the other Masters of my position." He doesn't plan to have Lowell House break off from the other Houses to make up its own rules. "I have been convinced that this is just not possible," he said. "And I can see why, but I think it might be interesting if we could do it."

No one has really pressed this point, but if it is exploited, the parietal demands could be had, quickly and easily. If a House could become autonomous and, with the Master's advice, make its own social rules, approved by the majority of the House in a town meeting, Palazzo and the others could find the real answer to everything they want.

Even the Houses which did not break off and become autonomous would be forced by the others to adopt the rules that the majority of each House seems to want. If just Lowell, for example, decided to adopt Katz's plan, the others, to keep up the popularity of their Houses, would have to go along. Perhaps it doesn't sound democratic, but apparently the democratic means, as Katz points out in the letter, don't work.

There are some problems though. Stewart would have to break a gentleman's agreement that the Masters use to keep their social rules the same. And even then, all major parietal changes must be approved by the Faculty.

But the main goals of Palazzo and the others-getting the House to be a de-centralized unit in itself and getting changes in parietal regulations that the vast majority of the College wants-would be served by pressing for House autonomy. Magraw said a few days ago that he was considering this, thinking about making it one of the recommendations of his group in the Fall. If it happens, then something very important will come of all the sound and fury and maybe Palazzo and all the others who think that "students can change things here" will be vindicated